


A meeting

by differentjasper



Category: Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood, Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel
Genre: Character Study, End of the World, Gah, Gen, Ghosts, Infection, Minor Injuries, Post-Apocalypse, Snowman needs help, Sort Of, but!! i like both these books, i TURNED THIS IN for a grade, i haven't actually finished the trilogy oops, i wrote this for a grade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-03
Packaged: 2020-02-16 18:09:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18696640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/differentjasper/pseuds/differentjasper
Summary: Who does Snowman meet on that beach? Is it someone familiar?





	A meeting

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a language arts class and got complimented by the teacher, enjoy

Everyone assumed that the Georgian Flu was something that happened naturally. A virus that mutated into something so strong that it wiped out around 99% of the human race.

No one considered that it might have been manufactured.

Plenty of people knew about the compounds. They'd started somewhere in the 90s, something about a place for scientists to focus on working exclusively on advancing the world. It quickly turned out it was just a place full of _"elites",_ people who thought they were better than everyone else, generating weird slang that no one outside of them understood. But, they did have incredible advances to science, introducing so many new things that felt like science fiction, so not much was done about it. No one considered what they might be like later on.

No one considered that one of the kids that grew up inside one would destroy the world.

That wasn't a well known fact in the new world, even in Year Twenty. Not even in Year Five. Mostly, people just knew that the old world was over, and it was because of what had been called the Georgian Flu.

Crake hadn't been a fan of that name. If he was going to name it anything, it wouldn't have been the _Georgian Flu._ It sounded so old fashioned and Romantic. Not like the expert precision virus he'd developed in his personal lab.

But Crake wasn't supposed to have an opinion now. He was dead.

Snowman-- or Jimmy, if you'd known him before the collapse-- didn't know about the name of the flu. It came on too fast, while he was distracted by other things, to know.

And besides that, he hadn't seen another human in three years. Not since before the collapse.

The last man he'd seen was...

Never mind.

Right now, he'd spotted a group of a woman and two men, and was hoping they wouldn't be too weirded out by his attire of a baseball cap and a sheet.

One of the men shrieked when Snowman stumbled towards them up the beach. Granted, that was probably more the result of his sudden appearance, rather than his appearance itself. He moved to speak, but his throat caught from dehydration. He coughed, hard, trying to wake up his voice.

The man who shrieked looked embarrassed. The woman shook her head at him, then stepped forward. When she pointed at him, Snowman spotted a knife, tattooed to the inside of her arm. He wondered if it was from before the end of the world, or after.

"Who are you?" Belatedly, Snowman realized that she was also carrying a small knife, to match the tattoo. He was _very_ out of it. "Hello? Are you feral, or do you have a name?"

Snowman shook his head, wondering momentarily _feral?_ before finally responding, "No, no, my name is... it's Snowman. I haven't seen another human in..." he trailed off, suddenly feeling a bit out of sync with reality. How long had it been? Had it really been years?

The man who hadn't shrieked, his face softened. "Man, that sounds... awful." Snowman barely noticed when he elbowed his buddy, the one who'd shrieked, who'd looked like he'd been about to shriek again.

The woman didn't lower her knife, but for the first time in years, Snowman had to read body language of a human who'd grown up in the same society he had: a minor relaxation, a more open face. "My name's Sharon. What's yours?"

He fumbled for a moment, but then finally said, "Snowman."

The man who'd shrieked looked much more calm, this time. "Uh, did your parents really name you _Snowman?"_

Snowman knew his already gaunt face had darkened at that comment. That was a _sensitive_ topic. "No," was his curt reply.

"I understand." Sharon was finally putting away the knife, though she very obviously left the holster unclipped. "We've met a couple people who changed their names since the collapse."

Snowman nearly forgot to thank her as she pulled him up from the sand.

The man who'd shrieked introduced himself as "Frank." Snowman thought that described him quite well. "And the other guy's Jeevan."

Jeevan stayed quiet; Snowman wasn't as practiced at reading people as he was before the world ended, but he could see the man was uncomfortable.

"So," he finally drawled, which seemed to startle Frank a bit, "how did you escape the flu?"

Snowman knew he looked dumb with his face scrunched up in confusion, but he really couldn't make his face move any other way. "The flu?"

"Oh my god, did you not even see it-- _oof,"_ Frank grunted as he was elbowed by Sharon this time. "Ugh, ow, no, I'm serious, that sickness? The Georgian Flu? The one that killed, like, 99% of the human population? Kind of hard to miss."

 _Oh. That one_ , Snowman thought. "Um, I saw it. It killed all my coworkers. Some of them just... melted. I didn't know it was called the Georgian Flu, though." Surprising, considering how many news and radio shows he listened to while panicking. Maybe the panic and the words he'd forgotten had driven the phrase from his mind. Or maybe Crake had just filtered the phrase because he didn't like that name for his creation.

Sharon looked disgusted. "I knew it was bad, but I didn't exactly look close at the corpses. Guess the fever was just... that high."

Snowman shrugged, comfortably numb to the actual sickness. "Maybe some kind of genetic deterioration mixed in."

"What?" Jeevan asked, but Snowman was already busying himself with asking Sharon questions.

"So, do you have supplies? Materials? I just had to raid the facility nearby, and there wasn't much there," Snowman started, making a vague gesture to the woods he'd come from.

Sharon glanced down. "You need shoes. Your foot already looks infected."

Snowman looked down, and grimaced. The foot was a lot better than before, not red and angry and puffy like the days before the Crakers helped him, but the wound was still leaking pus, not sealing over. "It's improved."

"Yikes. If that's improved, I don't want to see what you think is bad."

"We've got a first aid kit from the last town we were in," Jeevan said, and Snowman thought _that's the most words I've heard out of him at once._ "And I was an EMT before."

Snowman eyed the bag Jeevan was pulling off his back warily, but decided that dying quickly from getting stabbed was better than a slow death by infection. The Crakers could handle themselves if necessary. "Alright," he finally agreed.

He sat down and let Jeevan pull a smaller bag out of his regular one. It was full of needles and gauze and little empty pill bottles. There was also a bottle of Jack, which Snowman had the sudden wish to drink it, but knew it was for killing bacteria.

He nearly screamed when a splash of it went over his foot. He'd forgotten how much alcohol _stung._

"Sorry. Figured it would be better to have it be like ripping off a bandaid," Jeevan explained. Snowman didn't particularly care, but he shot a small glare at the bottle.

"Thanks. I've been running out of supplies, and I'm not sure how to get more," he explained, waving his hand, attempting to distract himself. He ignored the little Oryx voice in his head, the one that said, _darling if you just thought a bit,_ and the Crake one that said, _I could tell you easily._ Yeah, easily, especially if he hadn't destroyed the human race. _Only mostly_.

"You haven't been traveling?" Frank asked. "We've found plenty of supplies from... people not using them anymore."

Funny. That was the most subtle Frank had been since Snowman had met him.

"I... can't travel," Snowman said. "Not far."

"Attachment to the area?" Jeevan asked.

"Attachment to a sort of... responsibility," Snowman deflected. "I do travel, but I have some... dependents." He wasn't quite sure how to explain the Crakers. He supposed this was the best way to introduce them.

"Pets? Plants? Buildings?" Sharon inquired.

"...pets would be a bit demeaning, but close enough," he decided. The Crakers weren't quite at human level, they had too many instincts to make their lives simpler, but they certainly weren't stupid. It was just that Snowman had to teach them the things that Oryx didn't.

"Wait, are they people? I thought you said you hadn't seen humans in some time," Frank said, sounding accusing.

"Well, they're not... hm. They're... not human."

Sharon cocked an eyebrow. "But they're people?"

Snowman sighed, a bit aggravated. "Ok, I have some mental ghosts haunting me, but that's not it, if that's what you're thinking."

Everyone ignored the fact that Snowman had just admitted to something possibly very important. "Are they feral? Or apart of some belief system?"

"No, no..." Snowman thought a moment, trying to figure out just how to explain the Crakers. He supposed the best way to go about it would be to just... tell the truth. "They're genetic experiments that I let loose after the flu died down so they wouldn't die."

Everyone blinked. "...like, the wolvogs from those compounds or something? Or the pigs?" Sharon asked, and Jeevan just looked confused.

"I thought those things couldn't survive outside the walls of those compounds. And besides, they're not people," Frank added. "Well, besides the pigs, maybe. Those things freak me out."

Snowman shook his head, and wished he hadn't forgotten so many of his words. Those words would make it _so_ much easier.

Or harder, maybe. He wasn't sure, especially after so long in copywriting.

"They're... they were a secret species being developed. By a man I... knew." _More than just knew,_ Oryx said, _You can never really know someone,_ a quote bubbled up from his mind, _We were best friends but you'd never have known,_ Crake added. "A species... based on humans."

All three of them looked shocked. "They were doing even _creepier_ things than those pigs?" Frank spat, looking a bit disgusted at the thought.

"I knew those compounds had some shady things going on, but that's..." Sharon looked haunted. "And they're... people? Just not quite human?"

Jeevan still looked confused. "I'm sorry, what? Compounds? This sounds like science fiction," he said, much calmer than Sharon or Frank. That seemed to be because he didn't quite realize the extent of the

"The flu sounded like science fiction until it happened," Sharon retorted.

"I wouldn't know," Snowman admitted quietly. "I grew up in the compounds. I'm not sure what the pleeblands knew about them, besides that they existed. I know that there were a lot of NDAs and stuff. But the flu wasn't science fiction to me. Neither are the Crakers."

"Crakers?"

"The people."

"Why are they called that? Is it like Quakers?"

"That's the man who made them. Crake. Well, that's not his real name, but that's what he was called when he made them."

"He made an entire species?" Snowman nodded. Sharon looked a bit amazed. "He must be a genius."

"He was killed. In the collapse." Snowman didn't admit that he was the one who committed that murder, an immediate justice for Oryx.

"I'm sorry."

 _"Don't be._ He was a terrible person. I don't know why I was friends with him."

"Oh, that was my automatic response. I didn't realize you knew him any closer than that."

"I've known him since we were kids. Well. I thought I did." _And then he tried to destroy the human race,_ Snowman thought. "Would you like to meet them?"

"Who?"

"The Crakers."

"Right! Yes, yes I would. Frank? Jeevan?"

Frank and Jeevan both looked nervous, but Frank stepped forward and stood up a little straighter.

"I think I'd like to. It'd be interesting."

Jeevan looked contemplative. "I still think this sounds like some kind of science fiction thriller, but I'll bite, I suppose."

Snowman waved them forward, forgoing words as he stood up. He remembered that the males might start courting Sharon, but he supposed it would be fine as long as he warned her before they got there.

They all walked into the woods.

**Author's Note:**

> I forgot the names of the two people he traveled with, and can't seem to find them in the book. Pretend that this is two new people he found on his travels.  
> EDIT: or as my teacher suggested, that this is an AU where Jeevan's brother and girlfriend get to travel with him! for some reason Frank can walk and is a lot more blunt, and Sharon (we never got her name, did we?) is more of a decent person and less of a "bitchy girlfriend" stereotype.


End file.
